5 Key Take Aways from Forrester's Technology & Innovation Summit North America 2024
The EQengineered team attended Forrester’s Technology & Innovation Summit North America 2024 in Austin, Texas last week. Below are 5 key take aways from the event:
““Let 1000 flowers bloom!” ”
#1 Five Generative AI (GAI) Lessons for the CEO
Generative AI will be easy at first, then really hard.
You do not know where Generative AI expertise, learning, and innovation will come from in the enterprise as you begin your Generative AI journey. This is a new way to do this work; be open to where innovation come from.
Generative AI is not that expensive. $500k-$1m top end for enterprises; consider 10 ongoing development efforts; have 1 ready and in production by 2025.
You just have to do it; take step 1 to begin your Generative AI journey. Move forward!
You need executive, and likely CEO support, or the work will not get done. The CEO and the executive leadership team have to have their team’s back and support the forward direction.
“49% of genAI decision-makers say their org expects ROI on AI investments within 1 to 3 years to consider them successful.”
#2 GAI is the hammer to break down the walls between you, your company, and your customers.
Your company has a big pile of data. Your customers and employees have a smaller pile of data. Allow Generative AI to be a faster, more efficient language in which to communicate (learn through research, create relevance, contextualize experiences, and be more accurate in meeting and creating needs). Move from a single source of truth to a moment of truth - Generative AI can enable, and has enabled, these experiences to level the playing field. Advance from closed silos to information open to everyone with zero communications delays, which will promote sharing and inclusion.
#3 Human intuition | Machine precision
Release employees from the mundane and unlock explicit and tacit knowledge (know how of people, IP of how enterprise does business).Leverage your human talent for critical thinking and synthesis of critical ideas, and enable AI as the cognitive partner to suggest opportunities and synthesize vast amounts of data.
“84% of an enterprise are intangible assets (meaning Brand, People, IP, Institutional Knowledge).”
#4 Educate your executives, board and employee team on Generative AI and AI.
Data and Generative AI literacy needs to be a priority from program inception. From searching for answers to the power of asking the next question, empower all levels of the organization to experiment within governance limits (security, IP, understand AI insights) and plan next steps. Misalignment is inevitable, but catastrophe is avoidable.
“40% of CIOs are external hires. The average CIO tenure is 4.7 years”
#5 Trust with GAI and AI will be earned through accountability, competence, consistency, dependability, empathy, integrity, and transparency.
Everything is a data quality problem. Trust is in question when engaging with Generative AI and AI. Ensuring governance and provenance are first class citizens from the inception of your enterprise data efforts is of paramount importance to ensure trust. Focus on efforts that are achievable, right for you, and deliver value. Consider internal experimentation to learn before turning efforts external. Communicate your intent and technique.
“86% cite at least one trust related concern (hallucinations bias, unintended consequences).”